Putin-spurred Cold War demands effective diplomacy: Editorial

Remember the economic “peace dividend” that was supposed to pay off so well for Americans after the Cold War ended, more or less, almost a quarter-century ago?

It’s unclear if the lessening of saber-rattling between the former Soviet Union and the West, mostly meaning the United States, actually did produce any large-scale economic benefits. The theory was that ratcheting down spending on the military-industrial complex would free up money to spend elsewhere — on education, on infrastructure at home rather than on intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But other factors were at play. At the same time that under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush the Berlin Wall fell and so did the Iron Curtain, military spending on hot wars, including the first invasion of Iraq, took a big chunk of any peace dividend. Recessions and other macroeconomic factors were in the mix.

And the plain fact is that Southern California, where so much of what we like to euphemistically call the “aerospace” industry is based, has an economy that in the 1960s and ’70s benefited enormously from massive government spending on defense projects intended to intimidate the Russians.

Did we say Russians? Surely we meant Soviets. Because the breakup of the giant Soviet Union, the “Evil Empire” as Reagan had it, into smaller nations was supposed to help lessen tensions. And for a time it surely did. But Russian leader Vladimir Putin nine years ago called the breakup of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” It’s easy to understand why some Americans believe that with Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, with his seemingly grandiose and even czarist impulses, he is intent on re-establishing an empire.

That understandably brings worries not just of wasteful Cold War-style economics but of yet another generation that would have to live under the fearful cloud of nuclear war.

Russian experts say it’s more likely Putin wants not a new empire — that’s too expensive — but rather sympathetic governments at his borders rather than ones that look to the West culturally and economically.

What we need to mount now is a new genius of diplomacy to match our former genius of military force to ensure that a different kind of Iron Curtain doesn’t rise again.